AidFlows visualizes how much development aid is provided and received around the world. Users can select individual donors (providing the aid) and beneficiaries (receiving the aid) to track the sources and uses of aid funding.

AidFlows is the result of a partnership between the OECD, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. They came together to raise the transparency of aid, making global data on development assistance more easily accessible. AidFlows will be of interest to constituencies in both financier/donor and beneficiary countries, helping to further inform the global dialogue about development aid.

In the "Donor" view, aidflows provides information about the volume and structure of aid funding made available by donor countries. The data in the "Donor" view is intended to provide governments, parliaments, civil society as well as the public in donor countries with information about the aid funding that is being provided by a given donor nation.

Donor countries include the 24 members of the OECD which report on their aid funding to the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. These OECD member countries account for the bulk of global development aid being transferred today. Under the "OECD" section of the "Donor" view, aidflows shows details on the total aid funding which OECD member countries supply globally, both through their own bilateral and through multilateral delivery channels. The information offered includes data on contributions as a percentage of a donor country’s Gross National Income. Aid data for each donor country is also broken into the granting of debt relief and other uses of development aid.

In addition to global information on the total volume of aid made available by OECD members, aidflows offers detailed information about the contributions and subscriptions provided by all donor countries to the World Bank Group. This includes many of the emerging donor nations that are not reporting members of the OECD, but are increasingly important contributors of global funding for development. Under the "World Bank" section of the "Donor" view, aidflows displays data on donor contributions to the different development funding vehicles of the World Bank, including the International Development Association (IDA) as well as major donor-supported Trust Funds and Financial Intermediary Funds managed by the World Bank. There is also information on shareholding and subscriptions of World Bank member countries to IDA and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

In the "Beneficiary" view, aidflows offers information about the volume and structure of aid funding that is being received by developing countries, both low-income and middle-income countries. Some middle-countries are also emerging donors and are therefore listed both in the "Donor" and the "Beneficiary" views of the aidflows website. The data in the "Beneficiary" view is intended to inform governments, parliaments, civil society and the public in developing countries about the aid funding that is being received at the country level.

Under the "OECD" section of the "Beneficiary" view, aidflows shows details on the total aid funding which beneficiaries are receiving from the OECD member countries globally. The statistical data provided include indicators of aid dependency, showing donor aid as a percentage of Gross National Income and in per capita terms of the beneficiary country. Global development aid is also broken down by type of financing, such as loans, grants, guarantees as well as debt relief. Moreover, there is a listing of the major OECD donors and multilateral sources providing funding to a given beneficiary country, complemented by break-down of development aid received by economic sector in the beneficiary country.

Beyond global information on the total volume of aid coming from OECD members, aidflows offers detailed information about the funding received by beneficiary countries from the different entities of the World Bank Group. The intention is to provide a concise summary of the World Bank’s funding commitments and disbursements in a given developing country. An important focus is being placed on the development resources made available by the World Bank to the poorest countries, in the form of grants and interest-free loans.

Under the "World Bank" section of the "Beneficiary" view, users will find data on the annual level of commitments and disbursements coming from the World Bank; the volume of already approved World Bank funding pending request for disbursement by recipients; details about the soft-loans and grants provided by the International Development Association (IDA), the World’s Bank fund for the poorest; and a variety of data points about the volume and structure of grant funding coming from donor-supported Trust Funds, which are implemented by recipient countries and are administered by the World Bank. This data is complemented by details about the economic sectors in the beneficiary country that are receiving World Bank funding in a given year, from both IDA and Trust Funds.

Governments and parliaments, whether in donor or beneficiary countries, can be expected to have at their disposal detailed information about their own aid funding, whether outgoing aid contributions or incoming aid flows. Civil society, however, may not have such open and free access to country-by-country development aid data, for independent review and analysis.

Aidflows aims to empower civil society organizations and the public in donor and beneficiary countries for their engagement in the global discussion about development aid. The information offered by aidflows could contribute to holding donors and beneficiaries accountable for the provision, allocation and use of development funds, at the country level.

Aidflows illustrates the extent to which individual countries are aid donors, bilaterally and through multilateral organizations, and how their contributions compare in the international context. Aidflows also shows how much beneficiary countries benefit from aid contributions received, including the associated financing modalities and the allocation of aid to economic sectors in the recipient country.

Journalists will appreciate the aidflows website to access development aid information for a specific donor or beneficiary country. With data available from the OECD and the World Bank, journalists can drill down from a higher level of statistical information to a more detailed analysis of aid flows at the country level. The data allows comparison of aid volumes provided by different donor countries, and of aid amounts received by different beneficiary countries. Aidflows also shows key development indicators per country, and developing countries’ ongoing progress against the Millennium Development Goals.

Information is available in different graphical formats as well as through data tables. There is also an option to print data charts and tables. To help answer questions on the aidflows website, dedicated Help Desks; dac.contact@oecd.org for OECD data and aidflows@worldbank.org for World Bank data, are provided.

We are soon going to reach the year 2015, the target year for the Millennium Development Goals. World leaders have set out ambitious objectives to increase the flow of development assistance, reduce world poverty, and improve the quality of life for billions of citizens.

How much development financing is actually being provided by the financier/donor countries? How much aid is arriving in beneficiary nations? And how is the developing world progressing against agreed development indicators and benchmarks? Decision makers, opinion leaders and the public are searching for answers to these questions and are turning to multilateral development organizations for help.While there is a large amount of statistical information on aid expenditures already available in the public realm, it is often time-consuming to assemble data from consistent sources. It is also challenging to convert this information into concise, user-friendly formats that can inform and support policy decisions. This is why the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee and the World Bank have teamed up, joined by the Asian Development Bank subsequently, to offer to the public an easy and intuitive access to core data on development aid, at a global level.

User feedback will be important as we continue to improve AidFlows. We invite users to share comments and suggestions by sending an email to aidflows@worldbank.org